Oppression in the Homeland: Yussef El Guindi's Karima's City

Abstract

Oppression is one of the major destructive problems across all cultures, particularly for women of Arab origin. The aim of this research paper is to depict both the gender and sociopolitical oppression of the Egyptian women in Egypt in the Arab American playwright Yussef El Guindi's play Karima's City (2005). The idea of this play is an adaptation from Salwa Bakr's novel Thirty-One Beautiful Green Trees (1992) in her collection of stories The Wiles of Men and Other Stories (1992). Yussef El Guindi was influenced by Bakr's effort in resisting the oppression that is exercised on the Egyptian women. In spite of the fact that Yussef El Guindi is an Arab-American playwright, his Egyptian spirit inspires him; therefore, he laments the oppression that faces the Egyptian woman, especially if she has a voice that she seeks to be heard. If Salwa Bakr's novel was a scream in the past time which was not heard, that is why El Guindi recalls the scream in the modern period for share the same goal of emancipating the Egyptian women. The paper illustrates the dilemma facing Egyptian women when gender oppression is interlocked with the disintegrated political conditions in the Egyptian society in the modern era. Since women are treated as inferior to men in most Arab communities, it would be critical and problematic for them to voice their disapproval against the prejudiced patriarchal ideology as well as the despotic regime. Arab women strive to emancipate themselves from all sorts of oppression, and seek freedom away from intolerances of any shape or form. In their quest for these hopes, they resist, cry, and write in an attempt to have higher levels of self-worth, and self-determination. Unfortunately, this is not an easy journey as they face more suffering by being rejected, outcast and condemned of madness. The guiding impetus for this paper is to examine how patriarchal practices as well as repressive political and economic conditions serve in oppressing Egyptian women. Resisting these oppressive structures is the running theme in Yussef El Guindi's play Karima's City. The play explores postcolonial feminists' resistance against their oppression in national discourses that imprison women in traditional stereotypes. Drawing attention to the dynamic factors surrounding these oppressive practices is the effort dedicated by the playwright Yussef El Guindi through his portrayal of the protagonist of Karima's City, Karima. Karima strives with her local Egyptian representations that work on repressing her personality. This study exhibits multi-faceted traumatic and psychological illness as the damaging responses to these oppressive structures on Egyptian women. Postcolonial feminism theory will be examined and applied to Yussef El Guindi's Karima's City, depending on postcolonial feminist concepts of marginalization, silencing and misrepresentation by postcolonial feminism theorists including Rosemary George (1961-2013) , Chandra Mohanty (1955- ), Gayatri Spivak (1942- ), Robert Young (1950- ), Uma Narayan (1958- ), and Judith Butler (1956- ).